


Behind the Scenes: And Back Again

by CrlkSeasons



Series: Fair Haven Fluff [3]
Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-01
Updated: 2017-07-01
Packaged: 2018-11-22 01:50:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,706
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11370066
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CrlkSeasons/pseuds/CrlkSeasons
Summary: Last call at the pub. Coming down from the ridiculous, it is still on the light side but not too light.It is set at the end of the episode, Spirit Folk, after the sobering events in the episode, Memorial, and my story, Violations of the Mind.





	Behind the Scenes: And Back Again

The pub was the place to be in Fair Haven. The beer was flowing freely and so was the good cheer. 

Tom leaned back happily in his chair. Almost everyone had dropped in for a final round - except for Seven of Nine. Tom had a weird déjà vue moment when Seven told him that she no longer felt the need to visit Fair Haven. A fragment of a dream tugged at his memory. He couldn’t recapture enough to put the pieces together though. Whatever it was, it really didn’t matter. 

Nothing could spoil Tom’s mood today, not even the fact that Harry was still miffed about that stunt that Tom had pulled, turning Maggie into a cow. In a perverse way, it felt good to have Harry annoyed with him. So many people on the ship were still walking on eggshells whenever he was around. 

All that mattered to Tom at the moment was that B’Elanna had come to Fair Haven. He didn’t even mind that it had taken the end of his program’s open door policy to get her to come. 

“Tommy Boy! And who is this beautiful lady?” Seamus had made a beeline from the door to the table where Tom, his favorite soft touch for money, was sitting with a lady-friend Seamus hadn’t met before. 

“This is B’Elanna!” Tom announced proudly. It was the latest in more than fifty introductions he had made this afternoon. “B’Elanna, this is Seamus.”

“Belle Anna,” Seamus acknowledged, making the same mistake that many others had made. 

“It’s ‘B’Elanna’,” B’Elanna corrected him.

“Belle Anna,” Seamus agreed, “an unusual name for an unusually lovely lady.”

“Whatever.” B’Elanna shrugged off his attentions. To B’Elanna, Seamus was merely a clever arrangement of photons and force fields interrupting her time with Tom. She and Tom had enough trouble carving out private time on the ship without adding the intrusions of a holographic character to the mix The best B’Elanna could muster for Seamus was to treat him as an uninvited guest at the party. She took another sip of her beer. 

“Be polite,” Tom urged her in a whisper. “He’s paying you a compliment.”

“He wants something,” she hissed back. 

“Tommy Boy, I’m wondering if you, or your lovely lady, might have a shilling for a pint?” Seamus interrupted.

“See?” B’Elanna whispered triumphantly. 

Tom stood up to draw Seamus’ attention away from B’Elanna. “You don’t need money today, Seamus. The first round is on Katie O’Clare. She’s treating everyone at the pub.”

“Oh, now, isn’t that like the fine lady she is!” Seamus’ praise was in direct proportion to his desire for a pint. “I’ll go over and give her my thanks. After I get my beer, that is.” 

Tom watched Seamus cut through the crowd like a hunting dog that had picked up the scent. “Isn’t this great?” he asked B’Elanna. He sat back down and waved to yet another friendly villager passing by the table.

“It’s a bit crowded,” B’Elanna commented dryly. She’d hoped that they would be able to talk while they were here. “Is there somewhere else we can go?”

Tom thought about what else she might like to see. “Do you want to walk up to Castle O’Dell?” he asked.

“How long will that take?”

“A few hours, there and back.”

“I have to get back to work soon. Is there somewhere closer?”

Tom thought again. Then his face brightened. “Would you like to walk down to the harbor? You can see the open ocean from there.”

The harbor would probably be even cooler than the village and the early evening temperature was already a bit chilly for B’Elanna’s Klingon physiology. But Tom looked so much like a big kid that B’Elanna couldn’t refuse. “All right, if it’s not too far.”

Tom offered B’Elanna his arm in the old-fashioned way appropriate to the times in the holographic village. He pushed a way through the crowd for B’Elanna so they could make it to the door. 

Kathryn Janeway occupied a table not far from the door. The bartender, Michael Sullivan, had been sitting with her earlier. That was before the crowd at the bar got too much for Neelix to handle. Now she was alone. 

Chakotay came over to join her, tilting his head at Tom who was just leaving the bar with B’Elanna. 

“Do you think that promotion to lieutenant is in order now?”

Kathryn smiled in welcome. “It’s ‘reinstatement’ actually,” she corrected him. 

“Ah, yes,” Chakotay made himself comfortable in the chair across from her. “I often wondered how you got that one past the Monean authorities.”

Kathryn gave him her most innocent expression. “I tried to explain to Councilor Burkus that there’s a difference between a rank reduction and a demotion. But, he was right in the middle of a long rant about the conditions they wanted imposed during Tom’s confinement in the brig, It would hardly have been diplomatic of me to break in on him at that point. You do remember how unhappy it made him whenever I interrupted him.”

“I think the Monean authorities would be more unhappy to find out that Tom retained all the commendations he earned as a lieutenant and that his position in the chain of command will be restored once his rank is reinstated.”

“Commander, are you suggesting that I intentionally misled the Moneans?”

“Let’s just say that I want you to roll up your sleeves before you deal the cards, if we ever play poker.”

Kathryn laughed with him. “I think the unofficial ‘Mayor of Fair Haven’ can stand to wait a little longer before becoming a mere lieutenant again.” 

Then she sighed. “It also wouldn’t hurt to put more distance between the events at Tarakis and his reinstatement. The massacre shouldn’t be the first thing that comes to mind when Tom thinks about the time he got his pip back. I’ll send him out on a few more away missions before I tell Neelix to start baking his cake.” 

At that point, Harry came into the pub looking decidedly downcast. When he hesitated at the door, Kathryn waved him over. Harry sighed and walked up to her table. 

“Captain, Commander,” he greeted them. 

“Why so glum, Harry?” Chakotay asked. 

Harry shrugged to make light of his news. “I broke up with Maggie.”

“Human-holographic relations getting too difficult?” Chakotay asked. 

“It’s not that, Commander.” Harry explained, exasperated at this latest turn of events in his checkered love life. He lowered his voice. “She wanted me to leave Voyager and settle down with her. She said that if we live with her parents for a few years, we can save enough to buy a pig farm!” 

Chakotay struggled to suppress his laughter. “She always did have a weakness for pig farmers,” he pointed out. 

“I hope you let her down gently,” Kathryn interjected quickly. 

Fortunately Harry was too put out by Maggie’s demands to notice Chakotay’s reaction. “I told her that it could cause serious problems for Fair Haven if I stayed here that long.”

“Good thinking, Harry,” Chakotay approved, manfully keeping a straight face. 

“Uhhhhh,” Harry sighed melodramatically, “I could use a beer about now. If you’ll excuse me?” He nodded to his two commanding officers with the informality acceptable in Fair Haven. At the bar, he proceeded in his version of drowning his sorrows by ordering a half pint of beer. 

Chakotay knew that Harry wasn’t the only one who had a relationship with a hologram in Fair Haven. He tried to gauge Kathryn’s reaction to Harry’s news. “What about you, Kathryn? How are you doing?”

“I’m fine, Chakotay,” she assured him. “Michael and I had a long talk. Now that he knows who I am, he understands why we can’t ever be more than friends.”

“So are you giving up Fair Haven?”

“Not altogether. I may come back from time to time. It’s relaxing to come here, therapeutic. I still have occasional nightmares about Tarakis,” she confessed “But I also know that spending too much time in a constructed reality can be a trap. At some point I’ll have to let go of my feelings for Michael and just be good friends.”

“You’ll be all right, Kathryn. I think you’ve already proven that you’re good at being ‘good friends’.”

There was something in Chakotay’s tone that puzzled Kathryn. But when he didn’t expand on his comment, she let it go. 

“In time,” she told him, “I’ll arrange for a certain Miss Frannie Murphy to come and visit her aunt in Fair Haven. Once I reprogram her to have more intellectual curiosity and to share Michael’s love of poetry, I think they’ll have enough in common to be very happy together.”

A thoughtful, “Maybe that’ll be enough,” was the only answer he gave. 

Across the square, B’Elanna took in the results of Tom’s programming skills with a critical eye. As far as she could tell, he hadn’t missed a thing. Every detail in the village matched the period, the clothing of the townspeople, the choice of flowers for the flower-sellers basket, the worn patterns in the cobblestone. Fair Haven was authentic and picturesque, just like Tom said it would be. 

B’Elanna searched Tom’s face, happier with what she saw there than she’d been in a while. He was looking a lot better these days. B’Elanna knew that he wasn’t one hundred percent yet. But good days now far out numbered the bad. 

Someday soon they’d have to talk about what had happened between them and what that meant for their relationship. If the two of them were on Qo’noS, at this point in their relationship B’Elanna’s female Klingon relatives would be poking her belly and asking if she was breeding yet. She didn’t know how she felt about that. She didn’t know how Tom felt either.

They walked together through the town. It didn’t take long to reach the harbor. Rustic boats lined the wharf where fishermen sat mending their nets. Inside the sheltered cove, the water lapped gently at the shore. Tom had made a nineteenth century Irish port that was a haven of calm from the perils of the sea. 

In contrast, outside the cove Tom’s ocean was a wild seascape. Waves crashed in sprays of brilliant white foam against the line of jagged rocks that protected the harbor. They sang like a siren, enticing sailors out of the safe harbor. 

B’Elanna was unsettled by the look of wistful longing on Tom’s face. “Tom,” she tugged at his sleeve to get his attention. 

Tom pulled himself back from a far away place of youthful dreams – before so many of them turned into nightmares. “You’re cold,” he noted with concern. As much as he loved the ocean, B’Elanna meant more to him. She was fascinating - an exciting companion, equal to any challenge ahead of them, and his safe harbor rolled into one. 

Tom took off his vest to put around her shoulders. He drew her closer to the heat of his body. After one last backwards look at the untamed ocean, he steered the two of them away from the rising wind to a worn bench in a sheltered nook. There, they could sit and watch the last of the fishing boats come in. 

B’Elanna decided that this wasn’t so bad after all. She still wanted to talk though. Was Tom ready to make a lifetime commitment to her? Were they ready to be a family, with the possibility of children? Sometimes B’Elanna worried about that whole idea. She wondered if her parents’ marriage would have been stronger if they hadn’t felt pressured into starting a family, maybe before they were ready. 

B’Elanna needed time to sit down and talk with Tom. It was so hard for them to do that. This wasn’t a subject that she wanted to raise over a cup of coffee. After work, they were often too tired to do much more than unwind. When they tried to arrange time off together, one or the other was just as likely to be called away for an emergency. 

B’Elanna took Tom’s hand in hers. “Tom,” she began. But true to form, any thought that she had of getting in a private word with him quickly went out the window. 

“Tommy! There you are!”

Tom shaded his eyes. “Milo,” he greeted the new arrival. “What can I do for you?” 

“Seamus has been telling me that you know the way to the pot of gold. I thought I might have a word or two with you about finding the treasure.”

“He’s busy,” B’Elanna growled without looking up.

“Pardon?”

Tom studied B’Elanna’s face. He pulled her even closer. “Any treasure hunting you do will have to be on your own, Milo. I’ve found all the treasure I need.” He caught Milo’s eye and directed his attention to B’Elanna. 

“Oh, I see. Treasure indeed. Well yes, of course.” Milo backed away as he spoke, encouraged by B’Elanna’s unfriendly glare. 

Milo had been gone less than a moment when a fisherman stopped by to greet them on his way into the village. A couple strolling hand in hand along the wharf waved to Tom as they passed. Then crewmembers from Voyager started showing up in the harbor on their farewell tour of the village. Even Harry dropped by to find out where they were ‘hiding out’. They spent some time cheering him up before he wandered back to the pub. 

“I think Fair Haven is overdue for a decrease in population,” B’Elanna commented after their eighth interruption. 

“Fair Haven is perfect, just the way it is!” Tom protested. 

“I wouldn’t go that far,” B’Elanna blurted out before she could stop herself. She quickly amended her comment. “You did a fantastic job, Tom. It’s a beautiful program. I can see why everyone loves it. It’s just that, a few tweaks would make it even better.”

“Like what?”

“For one thing, the shore is rugged. It’s windy too. There’s not much use for a bathing suit here. Warmer temperatures and a stretch of sandy beach would be nice.”

Tom was tempted to compromise. The image of B’Elanna in a bathing suit, especially that blue one, was an attractive one. But he held firm. “It’s a fishing village. This is what an Irish fishing village is supposed to look like.”

“I know,” she said smugly. “That’s my point.” She could tell that she was getting to him. She lowered her voice suggestively. “A different kind of program would open more … possibilities.”

That caught Tom’s attention. “What exactly did you have in mind?”

“I think you’ll find that the program I can create offers you much more than Fair Haven.”

“Are you saying that you’re a better programmer than I am?”

“I am the Chief Engineer! You have to admit that I know more than a thing or two about holoprogramming.”

“That sounds like a challenge to me! Okay, you’re on. Let me know when your program is ready and I’ll come and check it out.”

“Give me time. After all, you had months to refine Fair Haven.”

“Fair enough.” 

“I have to warn you, I have every intention of using unfair tactics to win you over.” 

“Like?”

“I’m not giving away all my secrets. Just prepare yourself for a day or two of romance.”

Tom was more than pleased with the prospect of this kind of challenge. They’d test out each other’s holoprogramming skills and spend time together doing something that they’d both enjoy. He could foresee a whole series of romantic challenges, each trying to outdo the other. This was going to be great!

B’Elanna was also well pleased. She’d create a romantic setting - a few water activities that she knew that Tom would enjoy, candle lit dinners, walks along the beach in the moonlight. It would be the perfect way to set the mood for them to discuss their relationship and make plans for the future together. 

Tom and B’Elanna began their walk back to the pub, each blissfully unaware that they were not at all on the same page in their thoughts about B’Elanna’s romantic weekend. 

Which just goes to show that even in the Delta Quadrant, women are from Venus, men are from Mars.


End file.
